jotaro Posts

Playing 学園退魔！ホーリー×モーリー.

While its story progresses like the generic superhero story (HELP ME XXXX! XXXX IS HERE! Wonder why I prefer the bad ends so much over the good ones >_>), since I'm like really, really out of good VNs to read - oh wait, I still have Rewrite but... but for some reason it's not even close to being as entertaining as Clannad...

Ahem, right, the review. Well actually this is not a review and more of a complain.

I have read, watch, seen and experienced annoying personalities since childhood. Seldom have I met people whom I truly wish were dead (excluding those souls who were portrayed insane or evil), and even less so for those on the protagonist side of the story.

Well there was such a character here. Her name is Iori. She's the kind of woman I'd spit upon (... holy I don't think I've ever hated a fictional character that much, and a woman some more...) ten out of ten times if I ever had the terrible luck meeting such a person.

So what did Iori did to make me hate her so much? Well for starters, she's a typical tsundere. Note that I do NOT hate tsunderes; I love them a tonne, it's just that she tsunderes in a very, very bad way.

1: Childhood friend (protagonist) has minor argument with Iori. Iori responds with absolute wrath and absolutely denies any fault on her side. -1 points.
2: Iori sees protagonist making friends with a new girl. Iori responds by acting cold towards protagonist and being close to her archery teacher. -2 points.
3: Protagonist attempts to make up with Iori. Iori responds that she has curriculum activities (meaning ARCHERY SENSEI) and leaves. The guy wasn't even at fault and he's apologizing still and WTF DID SHE JUST DO? WTF? -3 points.
4: Protagonist having recurring strange dreams and looks worse day by day. Iori does not notice a single thing despite knowing him since like, what, when they're babies? The new friend was the one who actually noticed something wrong and cared for him. Good god. -4 points.
5: Protagonist screams himself awake a lot of times, and Iori ran into one of them. She does not see anything wrong with it. Continues to be cold and distant because protagonist is close with new friend. -5 points.
6: Not spoiling anything, but let's say that a lot of stuff happened, and Iori shouted at the end for protagonist to save her. Are you kidding me.

7 ~ 99999999: Protagonist warns Iori against certain actions with sound reasoning and common sense precaution. Iori ignores every single one of them and puts herself every single time in every single fucking danger possible in the universe. Gets saved over and over again. Never learns her lesson. In fact, taking a more recent example (which was repeated over a million times in past scenarios), even though she know it's dangerous to accept offers from unknown scouters wanting to take you in as a model (like, so incredibly STUPIDLY suspicious that anyone should know to avoid it), the moment protagonist states the obvious conclusion to get the hell away from the scouter, she meets him instead and went to take photos.

Oh. My. God. I'm sorry. I don't feel the slightest bit of compassion for this kind of woman getting raped in an eroge a million times, and may I never meet such a person in real life.

Holy shit that's an incredible long rant. =.="

School Days is actually pretty boring in my opinion =.=", one of the most deceptive games out there. I had no idea why there are so many good reviews about it; the yandere element can't have blinded everyone so badly.

Finished JOKER-死線の果ての道化師-. Now, for the review.

First, this is an excellent, EXCELLENT mystery genre Visual Novel. While it is (probably) not as long as the infamous G-Senjou no Maou or Shari no Kuni, AkabeiSoft so far has not disappoint my expectations. Though Akatsuki Works (or some similar named company that I'm too scared to remember) is a total mess and should quit from business.

But complains aside. The protagonists train crashed while they were on a school trip. The result is of course as expected: Deaths everywhere. But that was but the beginning of everything. The majority of the students and teachers (the entire bloody school in fact - what kind of a school trip is this??) actually survived the train wreck, and they found themselves trapped in an identical but totally unfamiliar school. Why? Because the Joker has invited them into a game, and they have absolutely no right to refuse.

The story's starting point is not original, as many manga or light novel readers should notice. And yet it is a story so powerful and animalistic that any skepticism I had was blown away ten minutes into it.

Like all mystery-genre Visual Novels I've read, this one is no exception to that Golden Rule. I'll spoiler it in case there's someone who wants to experience the mystery at its fullest:



To put it shortly, I was fooled completely. It's not that suspicion never fell onto that certain 'person' before - in fact that person was my very first suspect - it's just that the events that happened afterwards was done so well, so NONCHALENTLY WRITTEN that I didn't suspect a thing until it was like, wow, shit, I got owned so badly. >_> When the true mastermind was revealed it caught me totally by surprise, and it also reminded me that I should brush up on my poker skills.

Oops, that might be a spoiler. No way in hell I'm going to apologize though muahahahahahah.

Nao, to the other main theme of the story, horror.

This is a story where a person's humanity and soul is taken apart slowly with precision and love. There will be characters that hot-blooded people will come to utterly hate. There might be acts that are too cruel for people to take (The 18+ warning is totally justified for this VN). The Joker's personal story was so exceptionally well done that I can literally feel a chill staring me down from behind. Pretty sure that one CG is going to give someone nightmares for the night. Be warned, the antagonist of this VN might come to change your view of life. Sometimes you cannot help but change, but always remember what you are and truly wish for. That is the one and only lesson this VN has for readers.

... Aaaand, back to my real life crisis. A test which I haven't studied for in two days, a presentation tomorrow which slides my friend commented 'too many words' and 'way too bland', a missed class to rush my stuff, unfinished script I must complete very, very soon, need artist need music composer...

Where's my alcohol...

Review on Hong Lian Hua.

The atmosphere was pretty good. Weird incidents keep on happening, the protagonist tries to sort out the situation, even the side characters are actively involved...

And then it ended.

No joke. It just... ended. Following the walkthrough, I got my first ending (Osanajimi). The Other World boundaries pop out all night again and again triggered by that someone, the protagonist shuts them down again and again until morning arrives and it finally stops. Kuon fights with that certain someone who triggered the phenomenon.

And we never know what happens after that. What happened to Kuon? To that certain someone? Who won? Did the boundaries continue to appear after that? What the fuck?

After that I start to really understand that while the story and setting was nice, there really was no. Direction. At all. Things just happen without ANY sort of comprehensible explanation.

The worst thing is it doesn't seem to have a true end; supposedly you set things up this way because there's an Ultimate Route/Grand End as the final, greatest hype of the entire VN, and if that was the case I would've definitely continued playing it despite the confusion. But THERE WASN'T ONE. it makes me reluctant to continue playing the VN. -_-" Anyone who has finished the game, please tell me your thoughts about it, tq.

Why Trial? The original is out for quite some time isn't it?

The Phone system isn't really useful, it's just there as a fun feature. The only ones that I find useful are the Message system (To read the messages you receive) and the Camera system (take pictures of any scene you're fond of. I'm assuming that you can use them as image files as your desktop background etc, though I didn't try it out).

Not really the right place to say this, but somehow it is the only place I can say it. Reactions after looking through a little of Muv Luv Alternative: Total Eclipse's anime. Note that this short outburst does not reflect the anime itself, but the VN MLA. And the company Age. After discovering Owarinaki Natsu, Towa Naru Shirabe.

Good. God. Gimme Operation Take Over Mars already.

Finished Abyss. It was really good (despite its horrid looking interface - I still couldn't quite believe it's a 2011 product >_>) even though the protagonist was lacking in characterization. It was also a little disappointing that the heroines do not get their own specific ending (could see that they fixed a lot of that in Frontier though), and the chaos route was - how to say? Bad, lol. The Law route was pretty cool.

Playing Venus Blood Abyss. The interface was unfortunately less polished than Frontier was, but was quite the fun game to play. The only annoyance I had was that there's no distinction of entrance and exit within a dungeon floor.

Reading Sword Art Online Light Novel, GOD IT IS SO EPIC!... Oh wait off topic. Well, still reading 初恋１／１, with a little of Venus Blood Empire to stave off the mind boggling love...

You probably should, but I guess it's hard to pick up the motivation again after dropping it once.

The settings (Almost all VNs out there describes their characters as students) and the feels (IS there a VN that DOESN'T have any kind of sadness in it? Correction: Is there any story over 1000 words doesn't contain some form of hardships?) but their themes are drastically different. Katawa Shoujo describes the growth of a person tamely like most other VNs, whereas YMK employs extreme themes such as excessive bully and drugs with a bunch of crooked, utterly broken heroines. The atmosphere alone is enough to set them apart.

How is Yume Miru Kusuri in any way similar to Katawa Shoujo lol...

I usually don't finish pure romance VNs except the routes I'm interested, and if it's a requirement to unlock true end.

Ish playing 初恋１／１. The moment I clicked on New Game and the first OST began, it became a total WTF moment for me. That's because the OST is exactly the same as the one in 魔法使いの夜. WTF??

Don't mind me, I'm just forever in love with sad, dark, gloomy, suicidal themes to the point of death. =3

Mine was probably about that much as well lol, though there are a lot more VNs I haven't actually touched just because I don't feel like it.

Let's make a list here and see (though I'm too lazy to check my external drive so just the ones already installed but never played):

Demonion, Muv Luv Chronicles 01-03, Dies Arae (going to play next), Gun Katana Jui Yi Pian, Period, Pritanism, Shin Koihime Musou (still at common route), White Album.

And some that I played but lost interest, some that I know are just pure eroge and not really worth the read so I just got the save file, etc etc... >_>

Man I'm lazy.

Zolnir's English Translated Visual Novel Top 10 List:
1) Clannad
2) Narcissu
3) Tsukihime
4) Maji de Watashi ni Koi Shinasai!!
5) Kara no Shoujo
6) Yume Miru Kusuri
7) Deus Machina Demonbane
8) Symphonic Rain
9) Ever 17
10) Higurashi series

Special Mention:
1) Kira Kira
2) Muv Luv Alternative
3) Fate/stay night
4) Sengoku Rance
5) Big Bang Age

You guys probably had no idea how painful it is for me to leave out Kira Kira from the list, simply because it has 2 badly written side girl routes. So I just HAD to make that special mention list.

I had rated my list judging solely on the VNs' story quality.

Obviously I'm quite heavily biased to dark, sad themes; hence the immense amount of tears veterans would notice from my VN List. Still, I love them for exploring and pushing to the limit the borders of moral values. It is to my GREATEST SADNESS that I could not list 'Soukou Akki Muramasa' because it is not fully translated. Or Baldr Sky. Truly unfortunate, because they sure as hell deserve the mention.

The Special Mention list does not have distinction of ratings; the ordering does not necessarily mean that a certain VN is better than the other.

EDIT: Updated since Cartagra is apparently not translated. Unfortunate too, because that's definitely one of the more interesting dark VNs I've read.

Finished Zero Saga of Dengeki Stryker.

First impressions? Just who is this writer? I feel like I'm reading a grade schooler's best fiction work. Good for a grade schooler, but way off the standard for a supposedly 18+ work. Absolutely incomparable to previous works like Kira Kira, Deardrops, basically everything. >_> That was NOT how you make first impressions of your product.

Hopefully Heaven and Sky Saga will be better.

Well I like that it's uncensored though. ^_^

EDIT: Finished the entire thing... Wut? So short. >_> That's basically the only comment I have. WAY TOO SHORT. Even with the future added content - mind you, it's only a SIDE GIRL ROUTE so I'm not even trying to have expectations - they cannot change what's already there. And oh, Stryker Kyu is unbelievably weak lol.



I was expecting a true route where they focus on the Memory Collector as the antagonist. Guess I had expected too much. There were some interesting characters (like the one who can read minds) that I'd like to see development, but well... >_>

It's like a manga who didn't sell well and was forced to end prematurely.